A strong conviction that something must be done is the parent of many bad measures

[By Nic Lindh on Sunday, 14 December 2003]

Balls to the Wall

Watched VH1 Classic last night, and on came nothing less than the video for Accept’s Balls to the Wall, one of the fundamental 80s German heavy metal tunes. (The link opens in iTunes.)Seeing that video reminded me of one time when Accept was playing in Gothenburg, and all the metal dudes, myself excluded, were going. In that particular part of Sweden it was very common to take a tour bus to concerts. Basically a bus company would buy up blocks of tickets, then sell them as a package with transportation. It was a pretty nice setup, the bus picked you up, dropped you off at the arena, then picked you up after the concert. It’s about a two hour bus ride to Gothenburg from Skövde.

Naturally all the metal dudes were going to get massively liquored up on the bus down. At that time almost everybody had a nickname, usually something cruel. Like one guy had a terrible acne problem, so everybody called him nougat, another wasn’t very bright, so everybody called him muppet, and so on. There was one exceptionally creepy guy–sickly pale skin, dead blue eyes, lanky and greasy reddish hair, basically your teenage psycho right out of central casting, whose nickname was the name of a local mental hospital. The name doesn’t translate, so we’ll call him Bellevue for the purposes of this story. I never knew his real name, as everybody just referred to him by his nickname.

The bus took off for Gothenburg and the Accept show (rock! rock! rock!), and the drinking commenced. Vast quantities of beer and cheap vodka were consumed. Finally Bellevue had a bit too much, and puked down the center aisle of the bus. So one of Bellevue’s buddies turned to him and said, “Hey man, why’d you puke on the floor?”